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This book offers a novel account of the significant debt crisis which hit many developing countries during the 1980s. It starts with the flawed cycle of bank lending during the 1970s, and then moves from the opening act, in Mexico in 1982, until a solution was found with the 1989 Brady Initiative.The Debt Crisis of the 1980s also articulates closely the economic and financial dimensions alongside the political and multilateral ones. The key relation between debtor countries and the IMF is explored in detail, but the book also documents the tense and often coercive interactions with commercial banks as well as on the continuing resistance to the IMF-led strategy among G7 governments. How debt contracts were restructured during all those years helps understanding how the Brady Initiative worked in practice, and how it prepared the ground for the turn to global markets after 1990. This debt crisis was indeed one of the main incubators of globalisation. This underlines further its unique character in the long-run history of sovereign debts, before and after the 1980s.Remarkably, this book rests on in-depth interviews with the key players. Transcripts are included for the six most important players, including the former heads of the US Federal Reserve and the IMF. Archives from the IMF, the New York Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and commercial banks have also been systematically exploited, often for the first time ever. This narrative and analytical account of one of the biggest debt crises in history is addressed to students and researchers in economics, international history, political economy and socio-legal studies. It will additionally be of value for professional economists and lawyers working on sovereign debts.

Contractual Knowledge: One Hundred Years of Legal Experimentation in Global Markets, edited by Grégoire Mallard and Jérôme Sgard, extends the scholarship of law and globalization in two important directions. First, it provides a unique genealogy of global economic governance by explaining the transition from English law to one where global exchanges are primarily governed by international, multilateral, and finally, transnational legal orders. Second, rather than focusing on macro-political organizations, like the League of Nations or the International Monetary Fund, the book examines elements of contracts, including how and by whom they were designed and exactly who (experts, courts, arbitrators, or international organizations) interpreted, upheld, and established the legal validity of these contracts. By exploring such micro-level aspects of market exchanges, this collection unveils the contractual knowledge that led to the globalization of markets over the last century.